


Regret is Cheaper Dead than Alive

by Mistakes_and_Experiments



Series: Folded Between Disbelief and Damnation is Your Disused Hope [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Dead Characters, Dead People, Friendship, Gen, Meta, Post-Series, Sociopath, Sociopathic character, Spiritual, Terminus: The Terminal at the End of Lives, dead people talking to each other, friendship transcending death and enemy lines, introspective, you can certainly be BFFs with the people you've killed (or your killer)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2743472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistakes_and_Experiments/pseuds/Mistakes_and_Experiments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which The Story is Written Since I Wish to Throw Known Villains Into Introspection and Passable Post-Mortem Therapy via Deus Ex Machina Because I was Getting Antsy About Their Issues. If This Does Not Warn You That It’s Definitely AU, Then Nothing Will.</p><p>The stage is set for dead dark lords dreaming of distant pasts.</p><p>Part One: Tom Marvolo Riddle</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tom

**Author's Note:**

> Regardless of the series this is part of, this work can stand on its own.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Tom Riddle is Thinking (Most Avowedly Not Moping)

## Unknown Train Station

### Tom

Tom Marvolo Riddle was sitting here, waiting for a train that would never arrive.

He didn’t question how he knew that for now, a strange accepting lethargy having fallen over him. The bench wasn’t too bad, really, especially when considering that he could easily not have any seat at all when the place was this full. He blinked and looked around. He was in King Cross station. _Was I going back to Hogwarts again?_ He mused. _What year is this anyway?_ Was it before or after the Slytherins started respecting him, and he still had to prepare and wage a small war against those that would prank and trap him? Was this the time when he was still partly on edge because he’d successfully opened the Chamber of Secrets and blamed Hagrid for it? He wasn’t sure, and somehow his mind didn’t think it important for him to try to figure out exactly. There was a hazy mass of people moving all around, sometimes too fast to see clearly, and at other times too slow that each step seems to be taken through marmite. Nobody talked to anyone else. They were each occupied with their own destination, their own personal burdens and thoughts.

Some walked with the clipped no-nonsense march of soldier sent to the war in the American Colonies, uniform and saber included. Another woman moved sedately, her grace and beauty was as telling as her painted face and wig that she was a butterfly of the courts, _the French court of Louis XIV,_ Tom thought randomly, remembering something he had read from long-forgotten school days. Another walked with a relaxed slump, his loose clothes in colours so bright and clashing that Tom had to wince before taking his eyes away from what he firmly believed to be a fashion disaster. He might not be too particular about his clothes but there was a line that had to be drawn _somewhere_. He didn’t know why the first thing he noticed about everyone he’d seen so far was how none of them carried any luggage.

He didn’t question how he knew the fears, hopes and longing they carried with them far heavier than any physical belongings could ever be.

There was also the issue of the large wizarding painting placed high on the wall in front of him, still visible across the madding crowd. At first he thought it was a pastoral panorama for its view of the country side; rolling fields, a quaint church steple in the distance and winding hedgerows were a staple of the English plains. Then, the view changed to a building standing oblivious in genteel poverty, dusted with black from the last industrial revolution, and he felt his stomach churn at the familiarity. This was when he figured out that he wasn’t staring at a painting.

He did wonder for a few moments about the skill needed to create it, because photographs don’t usually move that far beyond small changes; even wizarding paintings don’t experience entire background overhaul. More technical thoughts on transfiguration were easily driven away again when he saw the features of a very familiar boy on screen with sharp observant green eyes.

These were views from a childhood he truly did _not_ wish to remember (truthfully, he preferred to have just erased from his own records).

 _But remember you would, for that is your burden to bear_ , a voice in his head pointed out, as the scene changed into one where other children were cowering from a young Tom Riddle came up. A smirk graced his lips in remembrance. Maybe not all of his past was worthless.

 _Look at the pathetic brats, so full of fear_.

An internal snort. _Yes, because intimidating a bunch of hapless muggle children is_ obviously _the height of power and wisdom_ , a second voice piped up, dry and cutting.

If anyone else had said that to him in the Slytherin common room when he was _the_ established rising dark lord, they would immediately be treated to the Cruciatus. The fact that it sounded exactly like him only made him press his lips tighter and gaze back to the milling crowd instead. The size of the display ensured that he could never fully avoid it, though—he could still see what was going on among the orphans of Wool’s Orphanage at the corner of his eyes.

 _They were disrespectful and idiotic_ , he thought.

 _And your ego is so fragile that the ignorance of children is so unbearable as to be worth making the adults around you suspicious of your true nature instead of cultivating their trust and cooperation. _The voice said again with a scathing dryness that made him wince. _Did you_ ever _stop being that pathetic orphan inside and actually turn into a formidable adult wizard? Because you could’ve fooled me with how you threw a tantrum at every insult to your self-worth._

He suffered the voice stoically. Inwardly, he cringed. Silence ensued and he couldn’t explain the feeling of relief that welled up then, but it didn’t last long. It would seem that his internal critic was not done.

_And while we’re talking to ourselves, if idiocy was a cause for punishment, then by the same argument you should’ve made away with most of Death Eaters before Dumbledore and Potter did it for you._

His temper rose quickly to his head as he clenched his wand, but it melted away with no less speed. Tom let out a long weary sigh, running a hand through his dark hair. Only tiredness remained and it had him wishing that sleep would claim him. The voice was right, of course, that was the problem. He could out-argue anyone else, threaten them or intimidate them (and in his later years, kill them), but he could not out-argue himself nor ignore the truth ringing clearly in the words.

He did not wonder how he could hear _truth_ now. He did not wonder about a lot of things, all irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

 _They weren’t so bad at the beginning_ , he defended (and _why_ was he forced to defend his Death Eaters to himself? He had no idea). _There were all those raids and attacks that the Aurors have never successfully traced, after all_.

 _Oh yes, those were the good old days_ , the other him mused, _we were still innovating new spells and researching groundbreaking potions—they couldn’t keep up with us. You know, Snape is admittedly very talented in that area. He could’ve gone far if he decided to go into research and academia, probably even ended up being a Potions Grandmaster_.

_Yes, he did have talent, didn’t he?_

He watched the scenes change in the painting in front of him to a group of young men gathering in a dark room. This was the second generation Death Eaters; it had a bright-eyed and ambitious Lucius Malfoy and a young Snape skulking in a corner, eyes sharp and observant. Snape never quite got out of the brooding phase of teenage angst and dragged it kicking and screaming with him into adulthood. Not that the Dark Lord had ever given him cause to be _happy_ … but this was far from the later years of his personal war ( _vendetta_ , the voice inside him corrected with pity, and he didn’t deign it with an answer). There goes the faithful and quiet Mulciber, less rowdy than many of his peers and able to actually follow orders intelligently and adjust as the situation demands instead of sticking it to the letter.

 _For some reason the best use we have for Snape is to teach a bunch of snot-nosed brats_ , the voice said.

 _We needed someone to watch Dumbledore_ , he cut in, before the voice could pick up steam. _And he was just the man for it_.

Silence reigned again for several moments, the shadowy flitting people passing all around him as noisy as a half-remembered dream. There was a masked man juggling several lit torches on a unicycle. He didn’t even blink at the sight.

 _You know, now that I think of it again, I never figured out why we feel like we have to fight Dumbledore,_ the voicepiped up unexpectedly.

He rolled his eyes. _That was obvious, wasn’t it? He was an obstacle, we have to remove him_.

_An obstacle to what, exactly?_

_Power. Now who’s being the idiot here?_ Tom tried not to dwell too deeply on the fact that he was name-calling himself, nor did he wanted to wonder what that meant about his sanity. There was a scoff and mental laughter.

 _Power? Are you bloody_ serious _? He could have given us power without a second thought if he liked us! The greatest wizard of his generation and two more after that—and he never did care much for it._

He ignored the minor sting of envy that rose at that. _In case your memory is faulty, he didn’t like us_.

Damn, now he could even feel the mental eye-roll that accompanied the next thoughts that Internal Critic was saying. _Because we were stupid enough to think we could pull the wool over his eyes. What did you think he is; another one of those hapless, pathetic, no-name orphans?_

The moving pictures within the frame in front of him changed again. It was Wool’s Orphanage once more, with a young and self-satisfied Tom Riddle taking half of the desserts of some of the kids nearby. He would’ve looked away in boredom if he didn’t see a vague and familiar shape in one of the windows. He stared, and the picture unexpectedly zoomed towards it.

It was Dumbledore. Dumbledore had been watching him for a while before telling him about Hogwarts. A pang of annoyance went through him.

The scenes changed and he could see a young Slytherin from his year exiting Dumbledore’s office—Tom remembered making an example out of the fool. _Ah, this must be the first months of Second Year_. He was also quite certain that the coward wouldn’t have dared to say anything to the transfiguration professor, but Tom still ended up being called to his office one day for a little chat. Halfway through the conversation and around the time Dumbledore probably realised he wouldn’t be able to get Tom to admit anything, the professor stared at him with that vexing disappointed look on his face again.

Tom remembered the anger boiling inside him. _You don’t have any proof, old man, so why can’t you ever trust me_?

The scene stopped, right there, at the point where the flash of anger crossed his face.

Now, he seemed to have an answer to his own question from his Internal Critic. _Because you don’t trust him and trust is an exchange_. _The man is a_ legillimens _for goodness’ sakes—even if he can’t pick up much of_ your _surface thoughts, he could certainly pick up those of that idiot’s. If I were him, I’d be insulted with our sad excuse for subterfuge as well. You don’t lie to people like_ him _; you give them half-truths and meet them partway. You don’t try to run around someone with that much power and influence; you_ negotiate _and_ compromise _._

There was a put-upon sigh in his mind. _You know what I’m talking about—the sort of skills you would’ve remembered if you weren’t so busy throwing tantrums left and right._

Tom snorted. _You want_ me _to tell_ Dumbledore _that I’ve been ‘making an example’ out of the idiot?_

 _Of course not. I said half-truths, not a Gryffindork’s self-incriminating honesty_ , his other self scoffed. _You could say that you had no choice in doing what you did because you want to sleep properly in the Slytherin dorms sometime soon, instead of, well_ never _. If we didn’t make an example out of him, we’d still have to spend an hour cleaning the bed from traps every damn night and spending the same amount of time to deactivate and reactivate traps around our chest. It’s a pain in the neck, to be honest_.

Now that he thought of it again, Tom wasn’t even sure he remembered what the idiot classmate’s name was. Well, no loss there. It wasn’t as if he was important. He was probably one of those people who got themselves killed in the first year of the war. He probably even sent that fool ahead personally without much thought.

Just another nameless cannon fodder.

A beat. Some silence, and then the memories he didn’t want to remember came back. It was worse because he didn’t just remember it; the giant canvas in front of him kept changing to show the scenes. How the young and impressionable Tom Riddle first entered Hogwarts and wasn’t quite aware of the long and measuring looks of his housemates after sorting, of the discussions on blood purity. His life was certainly not sunshine and roses then. He still remembered how hard it was to get chicken blood out of his belongings, before he realised he could ask for a house elf’s help. Even then, certain stains would still be removed faster through the use of some highly specific charms than house elf magic.

Like skrewt ichor. Like bubotuber pus.

Speaking of his repertoire of household charms, after a few months in Hogwarts, he could probably give a homemaker witch from the 1800s a run for her money. He’d bet Slytherin’s whole fortune that he could write a book and make a career out of it— _and wasn’t that pertinent ever since the dark lord thing didn’t work out very well, did it?_

And since when had he picked up a sarcastic internal voice?

_All the fools in Slytherin made life such a hassle around then, wasn’t it? And for all the strays Dumbledore always picks up, he would never have turned his back from you if he’d known._

He seethed. _I don’t need his help—_

A chuckle broke his thoughts, but he noticed it wasn’t even aimed at him this time. I was a worn sound and he liked it less than when it was confrontative. _Even the_ Minister of Magic _wouldn’t mind selling half his soul for an alliance with Dumbledore. What does your rejection of even the consideration of that power say about that sad orphan’s ego of yours when you were but an ickle firstie?_

_Dumbledore’s rejection had stung hadn’t it?_

He leaned forward and massaged his temples as he could feel a headache brewing already. Was there a way to strangle a facet of your personality? Maybe some dark mind arts he could use towards that? Perhaps lock it deeply in his subconscious and throw away the key? Because he didn’t mind throwing himself at studying for several years if there was, even if it meant being stuck to living in a library and not seeing the light of day in the interim. He was beginning not to care too much about how the voice does have a point, and more concerned about just how annoyed he was at it.

When Internal Critic spoke again, there was an unmistakable wistfulness to it.

 _You would’ve had him eating from the palm of your hands if he thought he was successful at ‘converting’ you towards the light. He would’ve forgiven your mistakes easier, made his own excuses for your lapses_.

 _Impossible_ , Tom snapped. Deep inside he knew exactly why he was angry—because he didn’t want to acknowledge that the possibility exist. It didn’t sit well with him to think that he might’ve unknowingly squandered a good opportunity; that he _failed_ to see such a great opportunity and thus failed at impressing someone so important.

 _You_ do _remember how he never gave up on Snape, right? Now imagine what he would do for us, who could certainly be a thousand times more agreeable than Snape—if we worked on it_.

It was worse this time, since the voice wasn’t even angry or sarcastic. It was too calm. And was that a touch of pity that he heard? He sunk his face into his hands, determined to just not think. He didn’t want to argue anymore; he didn’t even want to think. It was just… It couldn’t be true.

 _Come on, look up. Let me show you something_.

It was the same scene in Dumbledore’s office with a young Tom Riddle putting forward his best smile and polite behaviour. For all the lack of sound from the picture, he could hear the noises clearly in his head and a few other things besides. He could recall the whistle of Dumbledore’s kettle, the tinkling of teaspoons mixing sugar in along the subtle scent of the baked goods offered. Now that he could look at the scene from the outside, he could see the wary edge of Tom-the-student’s movements. It wasn’t a surprise—of course he was nervous, he rarely felt as threatened as when he was in Dumbledore’s presence.

This time, though, he could see the young Tom looking away when Dumbledore asked him whether he had any problem, the grip on his teacup tightening momentarily before loosening again, as he turned back to the professor with the same smile he had before.

 _Do you know what spells are best for removing blood from clothing, Professor?_ Young Tom asked. _I would have run out of uniforms to wear if the house elfs don’t keep any spare. My clothes are… a mess_.

The boy gave a rueful grin.

His Internal Critic shook his head, and he could feel surprise emanating from it. _This is… wait, this wasn’t what I wanted to show you. This is a different path, but never mind that. Let’s just see it until it ends_.

He could see the moment Dumbledore’s expression changed from calm sunny seas to mast-breaking gales, gigantic capsizing waves and drenching stormclouds. Tom would swear that he could feel the backwash of magic on his skin right _there_ , the goosebump raising tingles of the air before the storm, and he had to steel himself to not budge. The younger Tom Riddle backed away into his couch in fear, and Dumbledore’s expression smoothed out momentarily into a rueful smile.

_I’m sorry Tom. I didn’t mean to unleash my anger at you. I was… thinking of other students just now. Would you excuse me for a moment? I just remembered a conversation I need to have with the other professors. Feel free to stay here for as long as you like. My door will always be open to you, at any time of the day._

Tom blinked, radiating honest confusion. Dumbledore lowered his gaze as well as his cup on the table. The transfiguration professor’s shoulders were slumped, and it was odd to see this young Dumbledore looking so defeated for some reason. His voice was softer.

 _For what it’s worth, Tom… I’m sorry. I should’ve seen this earlier_.

Tom’s eyes widened in surprise; both Tom, on both sides of the picture frame. Before the boy could register the words, nor make heads or tails out of it, Dumbledore swept out of the room.

The older Tom, waiting in an inexplicable station for a train that will not arrive for him, stared at the scene in disbelief.

 _It… didn’t happen that way_.

 _It did and it didn’t_ , the voice that was so annoyingly like his own said. Tom had to fight down the urge to try to strangle it again (at first he considered Crucio, but since it was himself, he didn’t think he’d like to feel the pain along with it either).

 _These are all the threads of fate open to us. It’s not just about the choices you’ve chosen, it’s also about the ones you didn’t choose_.

Tom frowned and stared hard at the painting. _So this is a better choice?_

The young Tom Riddle stuck alone in Dumbledore’s office was confused. After a while, the boy seems to have figured that he could certainly do his homework better there than in the Slytherin common room, and he certainly didn’t have to share space like he sometimes have to in the library. Thus it was a completely sound decision for him to work on his homework there. The fact that Dumbledore had left a lot of pastries and finger foods on the table was just icing on the cake.

The older Tom still couldn’t get his mind out of how bizarre the scene was to him.

Yet after getting used to it for a while, it was puzzling to note how mundane and normal-looking it was as well. There was a mental shrug in his head.

 _Is this choice better? Truthfully, I don’t know. It depends on how you define better_.

Tom frowned.

 _Could you be a bit more vague?_ He didn’t bother toning down the sarcasm in it. _Maybe throw one or two prophecies along with that?_

 _It’s not as if we don’t speak like this to other people_ , his other voice said a tad defensively. _In this one, you mentioned_ blood _instead of just booby-trapped dorms. Dumbledore went postal because of it and thought of the worst of things that could’ve happened. He probably ripped Slughorn a new one for his lack of oversight. Don’t worry about earning enmity from your head of house from that, though; he’s pretty easy to appease. He forgave you soon enough once you showed that you were heads and shoulders above the rest in potions. On the other hand, Dumbledore never stopped caring about you and insisted from then on that you should never fear in telling the truth to him, any truth, no matter how painful. He learned to listen and you learned to speak to someone. You found that you enjoyed being able to just walk into at least one professor’s quarters without exception, even if you kept it a secret from everyone else to prevent jealousy and accusations of favouritism. Even Slughorn doesn’t know._

It was strange to see how casual the Tom Riddle in the screen in front of him calmly walked in the direction Dumbledore’s quarters on a particular Hogsmeade weekend, confident that no one had tried to follow him. He himself had no care for the frivolous activities others were interested to engage in. It was unbelievable to see how Dumbledore didn’t even look up from his grading when Tom walked in. Tom went into the kitchen to make tea for both of them, launching straight into a fervent technical argument without as much as a greeting. Tom argued about the applicability of two different transfiguration theory in changing an non-living object to a living one.

As he went on, it was obvious that Tom’s arguments had been precise, relentless and cutting, but for some reason it did not deter Dumbledore the least as he paused to look up. If anything, it made his eyes twinkle brighter as he started giving Tom counter-arguments on how it wasn’t as big of an issue as he made it. He also pointed out calmly that there were several more recent research papers he needed to read, if he thought he could easily direct Dumbledore into either of the two extreme arguments he was positing on the issue of souls in transfigured creatures. Tom’s jaws had tightened in annoyance, but he relented when he knew he was beat. There was nothing wrong with a tactical retreat, after all.

 _Points for effort, but I’m sure we’re both quite aware that the issue is more complicated than having a soul or not having a soul… and a good morning to you, Mr. Riddle_ , Dumbledore said.

The younger Tom rolled his eyes, but conceded with grace as he brought the two cups of tea over to a coffee table. Dumbledore had seated himself at the sofa now, and Tom took the seat right across him.

 _Fine. Good morning to you too, Professor_. Dumbledore smiled. The young Slytherin still seemed to be in a strangely grouchy mood as he opened his mouth again.

_Why would I need to say ‘good morning’ to you? You know how the weather is just by a glance out of your window, Professor. I know how the weather is and I would’ve asked if I needed to know about it. Why do people say unnecessary things?_

Tom rolled his eyes and felt like pointing out to Tom-the-boy that people had always expected irrational things from other people, himself included—it was just one of those things he needed to get used to doing in order to be able to blend in better. He also wanted to bat his younger self’s head for pulling Dumbledore’s attention to a part of him he didn’t want people to know—the part that was unlike other people. No need to make the sheep aware they have a wolf in their midst, after all.

To his surprise, Dumbledore didn’t take it as negatively as Tom expected. The old wizard considered the question for a while, and the weight of his deliberations surprised even Tom—though not his younger version. It seemed the boy had seen Dumbledore think over his questions often enough. What Dumbledore said the next moment was even more surprising to him.

 _That’s a very good question, Tom_.

Tom stared in disbelief. The younger Tom gave Dumbledore a self-satisfied smirk that he could easily read as ‘See, I know _I’m_ not being stupid. It’s other people that _are’_.

Was he always that annoyingly smug as a kid? _Yes_ , he thought dryly, _yes I was_. Dumbledore seemed to have come up with some sort of answer.

_The first and foremost explanation that came to my mind is this: greetings like that, is a salute. It is an exchange of a variety of messages in a compact form. It is a statement that you’re there, and ready to enter someone else’s company. It is a statement of friendliness, of how you mean no harm. It is an acknowledgment of another person’s company. It can be any of those reasons. It can be the combination of those and maybe a few others._

From the look on young Tom’s face, it seemed that he regretted asking the question. From the unexpected length of the answer, Tom was regretting it too. Dumbledore chuckled.

 _In short,_ _the principle of it is to to be friendly. I’ve said about how that is the basic idea behind politeness, haven’t I? When you put other people at ease and lower their barriers, it is easier to communicate with them and get them to listen to you and whatever message you have._

 _I’ll just take the answer as being polite, then_ , young Tom said, still shaking his head.

The scenes changed again, but he could see that the interaction between the two of them were the usual than unusual.

The voice in his head continued its narration.

_After a while, the easy rapport you have with him made it obvious to others that you were Dumbledore’s golden boy for some mysterious reason, and your housemates never got over their suspicion of you. It alienated almost everyone from your year because of that. Of course you didn’t care much about it—what use do you have of them, anyway? You merely tried to do better with the younger Slytherins. That had varying degrees of success, depending on the strategy you ended up using and the person’s personality, but let’s not go into it right now. You interacted with Dumbledore so often that he gave you the spare keys to his office when you were in Fourth Year. What’s more interesting is… let me see…_

The scenes in front of him changed rapidly. For a moment he thought he saw the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, with a smug Tom eating calmly there and several envious looks thrown his way. A hex was cast underneath the table, but Tom seemed to be quite used to this because he deflected it with his wand-holding left hand. He managed this while still eating. The scenes changed to a teenage Tom, a prefect badge on him, staring down Reginald Malfoy in the Slytherin common room. Instinctively, he knew that Malfoy was the other Prefect contender, one that Tom had clearly bested but seemed to be in denial for some reason, unlike what he actually remembered of him. The teenaged Tom had a confident smirk, his wand within drawing range and Malfoy’s frown had decidedly changed into a scowl. Everyone else held their breath.

The pictures disappeared into something else again.

Now, there was an older Tom in dress robes sharper and more expensive than he himself had ever worn, coasting on the awestruck adoration of the people around him. His charisma was almost a physical force of its own in the way he could part through crowds like Moses did the Red Sea. _This_ Tom was running for Minister of Magic, talking to important people, lobbying them. There was him visiting Hogwarts, talking to Dumbledore with a smug smile on his face.

 _Castor Yaxley reached out to the younger wizarding families too late, Professor. None of them are going to consider his statements of backing their interest seriously—not for one who is too entrenched to protect the interest of the oldest families. Even if he managed to get the Malfoys, I have the Blacks, Longbottoms and_ Potter _with me. I’m as good as elected now._

The smartly-dressed young Tom Riddle on the screen let the smooth, well-practised smile of a politician to grace his face. Dumbledore had strands of white intertwining in his auburn hair by now, and an unbelievably soft expression on his face.

 _I never had any doubt that you would be the Minister one day, Tom. I could think of no one better_.

At the last seconds, Tom’s politician smile shifted slightly into something a little more genuine. The Tom Riddle sitting in a train station unknown leaned forward from his bench, staring at it in disbelief.

The way Dumbledore didn’t even react to that showed just how used he was to seeing it.

Tom ground his jaws.

This couldn’t be real. Hadn’t all those purebloods kept their noses high in the air to look down upon him, until he seized enough power to be Lord Voldemort and forced them to grovel on their knees in front of him? How easily they followed him here, ceding their ground to him and giving him the respect that was always his due! And hadn’t Dumbledore hated him? _He_ _always had_. The old coot couldn’t even stop himself from watching Tom and breathing on his neck all the time because he couldn’t trust Tom not to be Up to Something otherwise. He wouldn’t have supported Tom— _what the…_

Dumbledore was congratulating Tom and pulling him into an unexpected hug.

The Tom in the scene looked almost as uncomfortable as he himself felt just watching it, but the tension eased out from his shoulders. Then Dumbledore spoke up.

 _I’m so proud of you, Tom_.

“You. Are. Kidding me!”

He exploded. Tom stood up from the bench, anger like he had never felt coursed in his veins as he stalked away from his seat and weave his way through the current of passengers, ignoring the wizards and witches he had bumped into as easily as the muggles. The fist that was gripping his wand in one hand was turning white. He wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it wasn’t that bench and that infernal frame of his life’s moving pictures. He passed the grand doors of a plaza where stage coaches of various forms and sizes seem to wait. He walked up several grand flight of stairs and down them, getting on stairs that he had to climb manually as well as those that moved on their own for him, whether by apparently magic or muggle technology. He passed windows of tall glasses where steel birds of various sizes and shape waited outside—he gave them but a momentary glance of disbelief before he remembered _airplanes_ , and moved on again. When his energy was spent, he sat on the first bench he could see.

And suddenly he was staring right back at the frames of the frozen scene of his not-life. He threw a cutting spell at it, only to have it bounce away from the painting, leaving the scene to mock him in silence. He sank his face into his hands, not wanting to know about anything at all now about this glory he could have but didn’t.

It stung more than he’d expected to see a Dumbledore that believed in him, that _knew_ that what he was doing _was_ for the good of the wizarding world and supported him every step of the way.

His plans could have gone smoother. Much smoother.

 _Let me read you Hogwarts: A History, 2050 edition from the world generated by that path_ , the voice spoke softly in his mind, and the scenes in front of him changed rapidly in accordance with the words _._

 _Tom Riddle-Slytherin_ : _Hogwarts Head Boy and a brilliant transfigurations and defence against the dark arts master. He reopened Slytherin’s Chamber of Secrets after it had been lost for centuries, thus proving his claim on his Hogwarts’ Founder ancestry. He is the protégé of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He was sworn into office as Minister of Magic in 1955, his proof of Slytherin ancestry providing him a significant advantage in politics. The Slytherins have accused him of being the Great Divider, for some of his close connections to those outside the house created tension in his relations to those within it. Yet ever since the rise of his stellar career, others have said that the Great Reformer is more apt a title for him. This is due to the fact that it was his unusual attitude to seek opportunities everywhere instead of just from one’s own House was one that he taught to younger Slytherins, and it opened more opportunities for the house members that had learned from him. His generation thus managed to engender more trust from other houses and assisted with the thawing of inter-house relationships at Hogwarts. Several years later, he successfully led the British magical community as a cohesive front when Dark Lord Sturmweiss, Grindelwald’s apprentice, rose in the continent. Great losses were suffered in the first few years of the war as no one had suspected that the older generation of Slytherins that had been disenchanted with the Minister had only gone underground instead of being vanquished and reintegrated into greater society. They hid their true alignments and opinion instead, all this time, siding with the newly rising Dark Lord, undermining the war effort from the inside—_

“Enough,” he commanded. It was a voice that would have minions scurrying left and right and generated instant obedience.

 _No choice is guaranteed to be better_ , the other voice said to him calmly. _Even in this wizarding world, war still came to them_.

Tom didn’t look up at all, preferring the darkness of his mind than these futures he could not have. The words didn’t make him feel better because somehow the wizarding world there _still_ looked more solid than the one he remembered, that it had flourished better. It had been a good question, hadn’t it? Why did he even think that Dumbledore _must_ be an obstruction to power? It was because for a young Tom Riddle, Dumbledore’s rejection _had_ hurt, and Tom marked him as the enemy from then on. He hadn’t even considered the myriad of paths open then.

Doubts gnawed his mind. Had his pride stopped him from trying to bridge the difference between them? Had it costed him everything?

 _Don’t get me wrong—Dumbledore’s also wrong for not even trying to trust us the slightest bit when we were in Hogwarts_ , the other voice in his head butted in. _He had his share of faults and blame as well. On the other hand, we were a bit obnoxious as a kid and too cocksure by a half. We never managed to compromise well until about later on either, didn’t we?_

All this epiphanies stung, because he didn’t want to consider that his failure had roots that were deceptively simple, even if not easily visible.

“Why are you showing me this?”

At this point, Tom was beyond caring if anyone considered him crazy for having conversations with himself, out loud. An internal sigh surfaced. It was one that he didn’t like because it sounded exactly like how he felt. Lost. Broken.

_We have a lot to learn, don’t we?_

“And what could we do about it, anyway?” He asked, through gritted teeth. If he hadn’t figured it out before, he certainly figured it out now. He was _dead_. Not dead in the sense of ‘he had just lost a body and hadn’t located one of his horcruxes’ dead, but _dead_ dead. As in, _permanently_ and _irreversibly_ dead and stuck in some weird afterlife. What does the dead have, after all, but memories of their life?

There was silence—blessed, _glorious_ , silence. It wouldn’t last, even he knew about it, but Tom savoured as much of it while he could. What came up next was unexpected.

_Do you know what hell is? Humour me, please._

_A place of eternal torture and damnation, et cetera?_

_Hell is living with_ all _the bad choices you made… as you begin to understand their consequences and how your screwed-up life up is mostly of your own making instead of other people’s_.

He snapped. “Oh for the love of—”

Tom never did have a habit for constantly cursing, nor the impulse to do so most of the time. Yet now, the situation certainly warranted a lot of it. He cursed in all the languages he knew, throwing several in dog-latin and latin as well. He cursed fate for choosing him to be its toy, the universe for allowing him to exist in the first place, and Dumbledore for not saying clearly what is it that he expected from Tom other than ‘the right thing’— _ask five people about ‘the right thing’ and you’d get five answers, you complicating confounding old coot!_ He cursed the thrice-damned fools who can claim to be his _parents_ and he cursed their parentage and how incestuous the family tree probably had been to have generated such _imbeciles_ when they certainly had a genius like him as their offspring. When he was done, he laid on his back on the bench, staring at the gothic arches that passed for ceiling around here. Maybe he could sleep his troubles away. Could he still sleep, anyway? He didn’t know. He knew he’d try his best to sleep, though. Maybe it would allow him some form of escape from this limbo.

 _If it would make you feel better_ , his Internal Critic spoke up, this time a little more cheerful than it had been. _This is actually closer to purgatory than hell_.

“What’s the sodding difference, anyway?” he asked loudly.

 _We could get out if we’ve learned enough_.

_How much is enough?_

A beat passed.

 _… enough_.

There was a slight embarassment in the answer, telling him for certain that even his Inner Critic had no idea about it. He cursed fate again and closed his eyes. Maybe if he was in a better mood, he would watch the scenes again, but not now. Now, he wanted to forget as much as he was able to.

Now, he wanted to mourn the choices he didn’t see back then, the roads he failed to travel on.

‘-


	2. Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter stage left: Master of Death

### Harry

The next visitor Tom had wasn’t anyone he expected. To be honest, it wasn’t as if he was expecting to have _any_ visitor in this corner of limbo he was stuck in, but it didn’t seem to faze the other wizard the least.

“Hello, Tom,” he gave a friendly wave, his dark hair sticking up in odd angles even now. He was an adult now, compared to the last time Tom saw him ( _before he killed you; in fact, he’s around his father’s age when you went off and killed James Potter_ , another inner voice supplied, but he ignored it well. He was getting good at this ignoring act). The weight of Harry Potter’s gaze felt older than that, though, especially in the strange way it managed to blend amusement and understanding in one. There was no pity there, at least. This was a good thing because he hated pity. It was the primary reason why he could bring himself to greet the Boy-who-lived.

“Potter.” He nodded.

Harry Potter rolled his eyes. “Just Harry would be fine. You’ve earned the right to use that, considering the amount of brushes with death we experienced alongside each other.”

He was far too relaxed for Tom’s liking, even as he dropped himself on the other side of the bench.

“To be fair, it would be more accurate to say that our experiences were in facing death _against_ each other than alongside. There were all those mutual attempted murders we had.” Tom corrected dryly. To his surprise, Harry laughed, completely unoffended. Tension that Tom didn’t even realise he had eased out from him.

“Yes, that _would_ be more accurate, wouldn’t it?” Harry said in good humour. “But what does it matter? It’s just like what that economist Hermione liked to quote said: ‘In the long run, we are all dead’.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“What, _dead_? Of course. A hundred-and-twenty something of a life is enough for anyone. I’ve seen all my grandchildren grow up and some more. Seen some great-grandkids too, on that count. It was a good life,” Harry said, a satisfied smile on his lips. For once Tom could see the faintest lines of age on his face, the corners of wisdom in his twinkling green eyes as he turned towards him. “I just thought that I might as well visit an old friend before going forth to my next adventure.”

It was strange to hear that. A friend, really? They were anything but friends when they were alive, and Potter’s childhood would definitely be better off without his own interference in it. Yet it seems that Potter didn’t remember all those trials, for some reason, and Tom had already had enough on his mind right now to want to remind him of it.

“So why are you here?” Tom finally asked. Harry shrugged.

“To see you.”

He scoffed. “ _Really._ ”

“Of course. To talk,” Potter said, with such a guileless and trusting expression in his eyes that Tom didn’t know what to say. Was it possible to be friends with people you duelled to the death with? The person whose parents you killed? The killer and the killed? He had to admit that the boy-who-lived was a worthy rival, if only by virtue of always being able to unsettle him.

“There were things that I never quite understood though. It didn’t make sense with what I know of Tom Riddle that was the best Hogwarts student of his year.” Harry said.

That piqued his curiosity. “And what was that?”

“Horcruxes, Tom. Why do you think that making horcruxes are a good idea?”

He didn’t ask that with an accusing tone, or a damning one; it was honest-to-goodness curiosity. It was as if they were exchanging theories in transfiguration class—and Tom had only belatedly realised why that was. He was wearing a Hogwarts uniform this time, and so was Harry, complete with the ties denoting their respective houses; a Gryffindor and a Slytherin passing time chatting on a bench, both too similar to each other for their own comfort. They both looked young. _Too young to drink and not too young to kill and get killed_ , a voice inside his head pointed out, but he avoided those painful thoughts of his former life. There was no death here, the same way there was no life. This is an in-between place. Tom had to admit that he was beginning to be sick of his own voice and was happy for any sort of variety in conversation—the times when the great picture in front of him would show of the path he had not taken rather than his actual life were getting few and far between.

He’d take Potter’s company even if he had to talk about _horcruxes_. He fiddled with his wand.

“The first reason is the easiest to get. What did I gain from horcruxes? Immortality, of course. It is the ability of not being dead immediately when someone kills you, and living again after that. Wasn’t that a pretty good deal?”

“It’s achieved by splitting a person’s souls, yes?” Harry asked, pushing his glasses higher on his nose.

He nodded. Potter continued. “So when you made the first Horcrux—lemme see, that was the diary, wasn’t it? You placed half of your soul in the diary, and kept the other half, am I right?” Tom nodded his assent as the Gryffindor continued. “Okay, so that was the first. Then you made the second one. That meant that you used the half of a soul that you were still holding on and split _that_ into quarters of your original soul, one quarter placed inside the horcrux and the other left for you. After making the _third_ horcrux you would’ve, what, holding on to only an eighth of your original soul?”

Tom nodded, but it was slower this time as a sense of unease started to spread through him along with growing understanding.

“What I was wondering, was, if we go on with the halving, how much of your soul would still be left for you at the time you’ve made the seventh horcrux?”The boy-hero next to him pondered.

“A hundred and twenty eighth part.” Tom answered, a chill spread inside him as his mind calculated with the speed of lightning, like it always had—two to the power of seven. It was certainly less than 1% of his original soul. The other young wizard seemed oblivious to the sudden stillness of his conversation partner and seemed to still thinking, his hands moving in front of him.

“ _…_ definitely less than a hundredth and oh, did you say something? Oh, a hundredth and twenty eighth! Yes you’re right, that was probably the amount left and… oh crap, did I say something wrong?”

He was staring straight ahead instead of at Harry.

“Nothing, Harry.” He said, brusque.

“Don’t say that. It’s obvious I said _something_ to offend you. I _know_ you better than I ever wanted but I the point is, I still _know_. You look like you’re in one of those moods that would send your Death Eaters avoiding you for several days and giving me headaches from the scar horcrux.” His tone was casual, with an ease Tom himself could never imagine hearing from _Harry_ while he was alive. But that was the rub, wasn’t it? Neither of them was alive anymore.

“I never…” he took a deep breath, still half-lost in his thoughts. To his credit, Harry allowed him his thoughts and silence.

 _Was it ever a good idea to live with only a tiny fragment of your soul holding the reins_? That annoying inner voice of his spoke up again, made doubly more so from the softness in the tone used. _That’s what you’re wondering now, right?_

“You know something? The British wizarding world dwindled into virtually nothing some decades after I died,” Harry suddenly said, as easy as talking about the weather. “Our numbers had always suffered heavily since our dark lord wars, and the prejudice against muggleborns wasn’t helping to convince them to stay and help the rebuilding process. When Diagon Alley was reopened again years after that, we managed it only because some continental and American wizards had decided to move to England. More people and fresh blood, at that.”

The painting in front of him changed, and for once it wasn’t showing Tom’s memories, or Tom’s not-memories: It was showing _Harry’s_. He had seen Harry’s Hogwarts cohort, a strong and united front forged in their trials and tribulations, but they were still too few. There were not enough of them to be able to enter the ministry and start change. For all the lessons the war had given them, not everybody had taken it. They could stand as rallying points, but any chance of change still came down to the rank-and-file wizards and witches, the body of the bureaucracy. It had not helped things to note that the bravest and boldest had usually gone off to join the war the moment the call was made.

They were the first to face the forces of the dark lord and the most to suffer losses as a result.

The wizards and witches who had survived were those who knew how and when to keep their heads down as the storm raged above them, and come out when the coast was clear. That was what Voldemort had managed—he’d purged the wizarding world of the people who’d been able to guide reforms firsthand.

Harry stared at the scenes with interest. “Oh, the painting worked for me too? Interesting. Yes, that was exactly what happened.”

Tom closed his eyes, almost reeling from the revelation. He tried to ignore the feelings of disbelief and shock that reared from the news and miserably failed. The wizarding world was a home in a way Wool’s Orphanage had never been. He became the dark lord convinced he could make the wizarding world stronger, _better_. Not… _this_ , whatever this is.

“Why are you telling me?” Tom finally asked.

“Because you need to know. In the final years of my life I went along with Hermione’s efforts to archive the works of Hogwarts students before us—in-between putting newer dark lords in their place, of course. It’s all in a day’s work, but I’m getting distracted. You see, I’ve read the series of essays you wrote from what, sixth year? It was about how you wish to change the wizarding world better. You had some good ideas for improvement.”

 _And to think_ , Tom thought dryly, _that it started as an effort to convince Dumbledore that I was a worthy student of Hogwarts_.

“They’re good. Hermione came up with some of the ideas in it decades before we read your work, independently from you, but it was still startling to see the kind of insight you could have. I… I guess still can’t see how that promising student decided to suddenly fall away from public life. You could’ve gone on any career you wanted then.”

 _And yet I went on to make horcruxes, and after that probably only hung to common sense by the final twigs of sanity’s broomstick, if not chucking it all into the fire of uncontrolled ambition altogether_ , he guessed. Tom knew that was what Harry wanted to say, but didn’t want to for fear of, oh, maybe offending him. It was weird seeing the person who killed him and somebody he’d tried and failed to kill several times being so considerate about his feelings. He would’ve laughed if he was in a better mood.

“Hermione said you could’ve easily been Minister of Magic material.” Harry said.

There goes that stab straight to the guts again. _A hit, a very palpable hit!_ It was made worse that he was hearing his _archnemesis_ agree with the paths-not-taken that he had seen before.

“Had she forgotten about the places I’ve laid waste to? The number of people I’ve _killed_?” He hissed.

“No, but it was ancient history by then,” Harry said, still inexplicably calm, his bright green eyes with too much knowledge in them and yet still no judgment. It was one that didn’t fit his young face. It vexed Tom more than not. “At that time, we’ve come to terms with the war, with the losses—we’ve ended that, after all. We were looking ahead at this point, trying to figure out what went wrong. How can we prevent such things from coming to pass again in the future under similar circumstances?”

The bench was in platform 9 ¾ and a train passed in front of them, its sounds muffled and unclear. Neither wizard paid it any heed. None of the trains were for them, after all.

“So did you know what went wrong, then?” Tom asked, more because the quiet was bothering him than from any wish of hearing the answer.

“Not quite,” he said, “But I’m fine with it because I figured out something else.”

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry about your life, Tom.” Harry said.

Tom Riddle didn’t even knew he was contemplating it before his fist struck Harry Potter’s face, the glasses breaking from the impact. Tom’s knuckles were scraped by the shards. His left hand would’ve hit as well if he didn’t check himself, his aggravation spread in equal amounts between the boy-who-lived and the accursed temper that he thought he’d gotten better control over. He took several deep breaths and sat down, not willing to lose to it. Harry pushed up his unbelievably intact glasses up his nose The bruise on his cheekbone stayed, for some odd reason.

“I’ve killed people,” Tom said, calmer than he felt. “Gained power over the wizarding world through any means necessary and been an autocrat. Most people who knew that would usually assume that my life is actually very good for me, all things considered.”

Harry snorted and glanced at him in disbelief, but didn’t say anything. Tom didn’t know why it annoyed him and tried not to think about it.

“And yet the wizarding world falls apart anyway,” Harry said after some moments, the finality in his tone more constricting than the softness. “For all your ambition and wish for it to be better. Because, hey, we’re alike in that sense, aren’t we? The wizarding world is more of our home than the muggle one. It’s more of a home than any other place.”

Two half-bloods. Two orphaned magicals, stranded in a world without magic for the first half of their childhood, who finally went _home_ when they were accepted in Hogwarts.

He didn’t like the extended silence that was filled with all the things he knew the other wizard wanted to say but didn’t, because Harry was too perceptive by a half. Tom disliked it because he certainly did not want to feel like he owed his archnemesis _something_. He closed his eyes for several seconds before opening it again. _Must. Not. Punch. Potter_.

“I just want you to know so you can figure out how to do it better. You know, for next time,” Harry said.

He frowned. “What do you mean, _next time_?”

Harry opened his mouth for a moment before suddenly closing it again, a mysterious grin on his face. “Ah, I forgot that I can’t really tell you at this stage. Not yet anyway. You’ll figure it out soon, Tom, I mean, you _do_ knowthat this is only purgatory, right?”

He controlled his annoyance better.  “And _how_ would you know about this?”

Harry waved his wand about proudly, and it was only then that Tom noticed it wasn’t the brother wand to his own. When Harry stood up, he was no longer a Hogwarts student now, but a powerful wizard in his own right; his dark cloak fluttered with an unseen wind and his robes ancient and woven with power. Harry’s green eyes were twinkling with secrets, and Tom remembered just _why_ it was annoying—it was too similar to Dumbledore’s. For a moment he saw an old man with green eyes, his messy white hair paired with a face that time has finely etched her tracks on, glasses perched slightly crooked on his nose. The image vanished and it was the familiar Harry again that he saw.

“I’m the Master of Death, remember? _Aaanyways_ , it was nice catching up to you and keep up on the figuring-things-out end. You’re sharp-ish—you’ll manage. Somehow. ‘Til we meet again, Tom.”

Tom nodded, holding back a grimace from Harry’s casual misuse of the English language. “Harry.”

With that, he watched the Master of Death stride away. Harry was incongruously humming _Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies_ , out of all things and Tom shook his head in amusement at that. It was only a while later with only the hurrying crowd around him again that he realised he was back alone with his own thoughts and regrets.

He sighed. This was going to be long, long wait until the mysterious ‘enough’ was reached, wasn’t it?

‘-


	3. Minnie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter stage left: One Formidable Hogwarts Headmistress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon purists and walking encyclopedias would note that I certainly fudged a certain someone's canon birth date and thus year of Hogwarts entrance (read: McGonagall). I consider this as necessary evil because I'd rather use an established character than create a completely unnecessary OC.

### Minnie

“You killed my _students_.”

The voice that said that had the precise tones of tightly controlled anger that he was a little too familiar with. Tom looked up and saw the tense face of one of his year mates, a young Minerva McGonagall. She had the awkward elegance of a loose-limbed colt. The primness of her lips was as they should be for a Prefect and Head Girl, both positions easily discernible from afar first by her badge, and second by her straight-as-pin uniform.

“Why, yes I did. I _was_ a dark lord, Minnie.” he said dryly. “Were you expecting me to bake them cookies?”

She took another step closer, almost stabbing his throat outright with her wand. Tom raised an eyebrow, quite certain there was no way he’d end up any dead _er_. _Hmmm, this is nostalgic_. She was usually a major inconvenience to his plans in Hogwarts; always highly suspicious of him as she faithfully followed her Head of House Dumbledore regarding him than popular opinion. Under any other circumstances, he would’ve immediately fired a spell towards her, but right now, he couldn’t quite summon the interest to care.

She sighed, the wonderful fury that seemed to blaze her dark coppery hair brighter suddenly leaving her limbs. She removed her wand from threatening him.

“I always knew you were up to no good whenever you called me Minnie instead of McGonagall,” she said, sitting on the other end of the bench. He didn’t have to look down on his clothing to know that he was shorter than he had been and younger, or that was wearing his Hogwarts uniform again, matching hers.

“None of your housemates seem to figure it out, though,” he said, his lips twitching at the corners.

“They’re not stupid,” she said defensively. “They’re just not that observant when it comes to you.”

She really made winning an argument with her too easy.

“I would’ve thought that they were _very_ observant when it comes to me, considering that they actually know my preferences at breakfast… and lunch… and dinner… and my grades… and my underwear preference and—”

“I wasn’t talking about your fangirls.” She said, and then something in her seemed to have snapped after holding it all in all these years. Fire lit up her eyes again. “Goodness, I don’t know why they seem to be everywhere in Hogwarts, I could barely study in peace! Some were even clumping together, giggling and breathless with gossip in the _library_!”

“Of course,” he matched her seriousness in tone. “How _dare_ they besmirch the library with their less-then-noble intentions. The cheek of them. The _sacrilege_!” He said in mock-horror.

That earned him a glare for his efforts. It didn't erase his smirk.

“It was your _fault_ , I’m sure of it. I keep telling you to stop them from getting their hopes up too high but do you even _listen_? You pretended that you have no idea Nott was selling your _pictures_ and do you know how bad the second years get it?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” He said, all innocence.

McGonagall stared him down even harder, well-prepared to deliver another harsh telling-to towards him. It hit him just how absurd their argument was when neither was even still a _student_ of _Hogwarts_ that Tom couldn’t help but _laugh_. McGonagall maintained her severe demeanour for three more seconds before completely failing to hold back her chuckles as well. It was a while before they came to themselves again.

McGonagall tried to hold back a shudder in recollection and failed, the curl of her lips ironic.

“Merlin, the fangirls. I forgot about the _fangirls_. I thought I could never learn enough variation of silencing charms during Fifth Year in order to be able to study and sleep in my dorms. I almost always had to keep casting them all the way until graduation. How did you even bear it? How do you ever manage to lose them from tailing you?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he said with a magnanimous wave of his hand. “Polyjuice potion. Clifford Parkinson. Tarquin Nott. Sometimes they volunteered at the same time, sometimes in turn. I had no problems losing fangirls with the two of them on the loose and in disguise.”

Between the two of them, it didn’t need to be mentioned that neither men were remotely close to handsome and was in fact not quite confident of their looks. One hand flew to her mouth.

“You didn’t!”

“I certainly _did_. They did say they want to know how it feels to have a girlfriend so I offered them a Faustian bargain. The only rule I gave them was to keep evading and keep ‘trying to run away’. If the girls did manage to cop some feel right then, that was acceptable. They were also to stay within pursuing distance until it faded away naturally so the girls would know exactly _who_ they’re getting. I pretended not to know that they didn’t exactly… mind getting groped.”

McGonagall left eyelid was twitching at this point, “It doesn’t bother you that those girls would _still_ be misusing your body, even if it wasn’t precisely the one you’re wearing—oh, don’t look at me like that! You know what I mean!”

She was half horrified but too curious to _not_ ask, no matter how akin to a trainwreck the whole story was turning into. Not for the first time he wondered if she wouldn’t be better served in Ravenclaw than Gryffindor—and perhaps that _was_ the issue when she hatstalled. He moved on to something he had always thought he wanted to tell her, but kept forgetting about. At the very least, her reaction would be interesting.

“Did you know that Nott’s first girlfriend actually agreed to be with him as long as he promised he could polyjuice into me while sleeping with her? He begged, grovelled and abased himself so desperately that I agreed in the end at a hefty price in galleons and several large favours that I could call in any time. I made a tidy profit selling polyjuice potion to him throughout that year. I’m not sure he ever realised how much, though I am certainly glad for the access to the Nott family’s bank account. After his second girlfriend, he’d actually developed quite the reputation as my body double among girls. That is, if you’re interested in that kind of role play.”

She hit his shoulders with one disbelieving shriek. He had to hold back a grimace. He’d always known her to be powerful, even outside her spells. A damsel-in-distress, McGonagall was not.

“TOM! That was too much information! How did you… why did you… I don’t even…”

The Head Girl was all sorts of flustered and awkward. He laughed. It felt strange, to be laughing so easily with someone else instead of the aloneness that came around from being surrounded by cowering minions. There was a power distance that was unbridgeable when one is alone at the top, but he hadn’t realised how boring it was until he could actually talk to people he considered his peers; like Harry Potter, like McGonagall.

“Why did I sell my form out to Nott?” He said, wryly. “Why else does anyone whore anything out? The galleons, Minnie, the galleons… at the very least until I graduated. He was also a definite and predictable buyer of contraceptive potions too. Not all of us have a trust fund at our beck and call.”

“Tom Marvolo Riddle!” He was almost certain it was impossible for her face to get any redder than it was now. It _was_ still amusing to know, after all these years, though she was nowhere as embarrassed as when she was younger. Now, the severe, no-nonsense look she cultivated in her time as a professor looked rather out-of-place in her teenage body. It was unfortunate that all good things must come to an end, he thought. This was especially true when she had called him by his full name. It was enough to fizzle out what good humour had alighted before.

He waved his wand in the air, letting his name float ahead of them before rearranging the letters into his dark lord name.

“ _I am Lord Voldemort_ ,” he said quietly. _There_. He had her attention now.

“I always hated the idiot whose contribution to my life was only siring me and giving me his name. And yes, I did kill your students, Minnie,” he stated.

He was not going to lie to her nor would he pretend to be something he wasn’t. That he was still the very good discussion partner that she remembered did not mean he had stopped being a mass-murderer. He acknowledged her intelligence enough to know it would be foolish to trick her, and he didn’t want her to ever forget that the dichotomy between Tom-the-student and Voldemort-the-dark-lord never really existed.

He was both. He was _always_ both.

Her eyes dimmed and for a split second she looked older than what was possible for a youthful face. The anger that was in her voice earlier wasn’t there for some reason he couldn’t understand.

“Yes. I suppose you did, didn’t you?”

She wasn’t even looking at him when she said that, eyes lost in some memory he didn’t want to know about.

The great framed screen in front of them began to show the more unpleasant parts of his life. There goes the skirmishes and the raids. There goes the fights and there was the Battle of Hogwarts. Neither was really watching the scenes. Tom skipped it because he was bored stiff after watching the first twenty times or so that even the dullest dialogues was stuck in his mind, and Minnie avoided it because he suspected it would _still_ hurt her to see those deaths again even if she’d seen them repeated more than he had.

“Were you here for your pound of flesh, then?” He asked her, idly.

“Did you regret taking their lives?” She asked back.

He debated between giving her the answer he knew she wanted to hear and the truth he was almost certain she wasn’t ready to hear. His Internal Critic stopped him from saying anything in haste. _Come on, let’s not be a Gryffindork about this. Stop and think first and let’s not say anything stupid or incriminating_.

 _How on earth could anything be more incriminating than ‘I am a dark lord’_ , he asked incredulously.

 _Well, nothing_ too _incriminating…_

He heard her exhale, and saw her taking her glasses off and rubbing the bridge of her nose. Her hawk-like eyes were piercing.  Most would’ve quailed under it—it was fortunate that he wasn’t most people.

“You didn’t, did you?” She asked, eerily calm.

It was worse to hear her voice without the blame in it. It would’ve been simpler if she just blamed him, marked him as utterly evil dark lord and stop there, thus forcing them to be at opposite ends when the battle lines were drawn. It was certainly simpler than listening to the disappointment in the voice of his best Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes partner, regardless of their arguments and philosophical differences in opinion. It was worse because he could hear the strain in her voice. She was trying to understand him and yet still failing at it, regardless of her own intellect and continuous effort.

It would have been easier if they were just out at each other’s throat.

He didn’t really feel anything for all those deaths he had caused, whether directly or indirectly—after all, what was the worth of all those common people, anyway? It’s not as if all of them were destined to have created groundbreaking advancements in magic or any other field. As for those people who could’ve made something, now that he had the time and space to ponder about their deaths, he _did_ have some regret killing them. Not that he was going to ever lose sleep over that, but _still_ , wonder of wonders, he had _some_ regrets after all. That was _already_ a miracle on his books.

He was quite sure he didn’t have any when he was still alive, or at the very least he never made much time to think over things to ever realise it.

But McGonagall wouldn’t have noticed it.

She wouldn’t see because she expected _everyone_ to be like her; to have compassion and mercy and all other soft and squishy feelings and whatnot ( _Pffft. Useless_ ). What she’d pay attention more was how meaningless their deaths had been and how it was _still_ meaningless to him. It would hurt her to hear that, he knew, the same way that it would also hurt Dumbledore if he knew, or even Harry (but somehow he doubted that; that particular wizard had the oddest talent of being able to understand him for some reason, even on points he didn’t agree with).

They were normal where he wasn’t, and that was the end of it.

All things considered, he could, however, _compromise_. He’d certainly begun to learn something here, hadn’t he? He also knew that deep down, she was wondering about how and why _everything_ turned out the way it did instead of just her students.

She was clearly wondering about the war too.

“I regretted taking the wrong step out of Hogwarts,” he finally admitted. From the way he dragged the words out of him, one would suspect it hurt more than getting malformed wisdom teeth removed. “Maybe I’ve been taking the wrong step even since I was in Hogwarts.”

He had realised now that if he had been more patient and subtle in gaining power, he would have been much less of a troll in a china shop and the wizarding world would suffer from his tumults and ravages less. People would oppose him less. He would’ve left a more intact world as his legacy, a world that can actually progress forward to a new renaissance.

He wouldn’t have left one that was doomed to crumble and fall in on itself after several generations.

She turned to him and stared at him, as if she had only really seen him for the first time. There was a brightness in her eyes that he had never seen before, a genuine regard that he found to be… baffling. It was something that he’d only seen when he’d corrected her in Transfiguration, and even then it wasn’t this deep.

“You’re… you’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

He held back from rolling his eyes and instead gave her a long-suffering look. “When did I actually lie to you, McGonagall? Say, not even when we were at Hogwarts.”

Actually, she was too intelligent for him to ever blatantly lie to, but he wasn’t going to tell her as he did subtler forms of misdirection just fine. He had also lied to plenty lesser minds and he wouldn’t think twice about doing so again. _Who cares about them?_

“Still, I’d never imagine I’d hear those words from you, Tom,” she said. “You were always so… knowledgeable about many things compared to our classmates. Self-assured. Confident.”

“Arrogant.” Tom conceded after a while. _Pride goes before the fall_ , he thought. “And unfortunately rather bad at learning from prior mistakes because of that.”

She was still staring at him with that inexplicable, intense look, and it made him a little uncomfortable.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take your pound of flesh?” He asked.

She shrugged, looking away. “I’ve met many of the dead students you’ve killed. They’ve begun to move on. _I’ve_ begun to move on. Then I met Harry, who thought that I should meet you before going anywhere else. He gave me the directions to reach you, and voila, I’m here.”

It certainly made talking with people easier, this whole death thing, he mused. Grudges don’t last that long after a while, not when you could catch up with everyone else after everything was over. He had to wonder how long ‘a while’ was here, though. Several decades? A century? Harry had lived for well over a century, after all.

His forehead creased. “Whatever for?”

‘ _Why would you want to meet me?_ ’ Was the question he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.

“At first? To beat some sense into you. I’m still the Head Girl to your Head Boy.” She took a deep calming breath, as if to stop herself from flying into a fit, and he couldn’t help but wonder why. Her next words gave the answer.

“It was always so _frustrating_ to see you go taking unnecessary risks in studying questionable forms of magic _precisely_ because I know you’re far from stupid, Tom. I know you could be _more_.” she said primly.

His lips twitched at the edges to form the beginnings of a smile. It was always amusing to see the extremes that McGonagall could fluidly shift through; the cerebral student and the hot-headed prefect. The suspicious rival to the trusting friend. It was enough to give most people a whiplash; he’d stopped bothering to figure out at which point she was currently at a long time ago.

“You know,” she said, her voice casual. “We would’ve been much better friends if you could’ve been this honest with me back then and less of that smooth, fake perfect student. I can’t help but wonder a little of what might’ve been—”

“They’re over and done with, McGonagall.” He cut in, harsh.

“Mmmm,” she murmurred, but didn’t actually agree or disagree with him and neither was she offended; when they were in Hogwarts, he knew she would’ve been in righteous anger. He chalked her maturity down to her actual age. “They are, aren’t they? But don’t you wonder?”

As she said that, the pictures in front of him changed, shifted, and Tom leaned forward in curiosity. He could see a twelve year old him again, looking painfully young to his eyes, in the Hogwarts library. He remembered the first time he personally met McGonagall; they had been trying to check out the same book, _Hogwarts: a History_. Tom shook his head.

“I still can’t imagine how that happened. Of all the books in Hogwarts, how on _earth_ do they have only one copy of the most well-known primer on Hogwarts?”

A small smile grew on her face. “You don’t remember? It was the edition that counted. The latest one at that time actually had a _lot_ of excisions, as was the one before it. To keep it brief, I think, but it loses many details in the process as the editing wasn’t that stellar. I remember reading it and feeling dissatisfied. The one we fought over was much more comprehensive.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t even remember why I’d even _want_ that book.”

He’d probably relegated it to the dusty dungeons of his memory, along with all other ‘unimportant’ information as he ascended to power. Now he wondered whether all of the memories he had conveniently not recall was as unimportant as they seem.

The young Tom Riddle in the picture in front of him didn’t distract the young Minerva and made off with the book, like he had remembered it to be, cementing their rivalry from that day on. The young boy blew an exasperated huff but acknowledged some of her claim on it.

 _Fine. I’ll borrow it, because_ I _saw it first, but you can ask me for it anytime you want to read it. I’ll always be in the library on Monday, Wednesday and Friday_.

Little Minerva didn’t fold her arms in front of her chest, but she had an impressive disapproving glare even at that age.

_How do I know that you mean it?_

_You don’t_ , he said drolly. _You’ll just have to trust me_.

“Hmmm, I don’t recall ever giving anyone my schedule out on first year,” Tom mused, curious. As far as he’d remembered, he was on the defensive most of the time.

The McGonagall that was sitting beside him sat utterly still and silent at the scene playing out in front of them. “Tom, I’m quite _sure_ it didn’t go that way.”

He smirked. “It does that sometimes, yes. I am told that it can show not just scenes from the past, but also of what could’ve been. Harry said something about other possible futures.”

 _But it’s not fair. I don’t see_ you _being forced to trust me._ Young Minerva pointed out. An exasperated Tom rolled his eyes and rummaged through his book bag, pulled a slim, dog-eared volume out to shove into her hands. It was such an unassuming and worn book too.

 _Oh,_ whatever _. Keep that for the time being, then. Consider it as my bond for the book. You can return it every time you borrow this book from me, for as long as I borrow it from the library._

 _How could this be worth that?_ But even as she said that, she was peering curiously into the title.

Twelve-year old Tom scoffed. _Are you kidding me? It’s worth that and_ more _. I don’t think even Hogwarts has a copy. Do_ not _lose it. I’ll borrow Hogwarts: A History forever to make sure you’ll never read it if you do._

She looked horrified at that, but also impressed at his creativity. _You don’t mean that!_

_I do. Stop fretting. It’s easy enough to do, isn’t it? Don’t lose it._

This time, when Tom walked away to check the book out, Minerva’s attention was already completely taken by the book in her hands.

 _The Prince_ , by Niccolo Machiavelli. She started opening the pages.

Tom shook his head. “Right. I can’t imagine I just gave away that book. It’s probably one of the few interesting ones I have then. But I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it? The things I didn’t even consider.”

McGonagall was paying the scenes in front of them uncommon attention. She didn’t seem to even hear him yet.

Even now when she was relaxed, her back stayed perfectly straight. He wondered how that could be comfortable, until he surmised that she might be half-dead on her feet and she’d _still_ keep that perfect poise. He’d seen it at the Battle of Hogwarts, hadn’t he? And he remembered that she developed it back when they were still at school. Her cool head and sharp tongue was a weapon, wielded often to cut down any purebloods making the mistake of underestimating her for being a half-blood. _Huh, she_ is _a half-blood, isn’t she?_ How did he forget that little thing they had in common?

The young Tom Riddle on screen had just found those commonalities out instead of remembering them. And for all her suspicion of the Slytherin who was hogging _Hogwarts: a History_ , young Minerva defended him when some of her housemates thought him easy picking.

_What did you just call him Rafferty? Would you dare say exactly the same thing to my face?_

Tom thought he heard a wistful sigh from her just then.

“What now, McGonagall? Still need to beat some sense into me?” He asked.

He made his tone a touch prideful on purpose, challenging. It had never failed to cause her to grind her teeth in annoyance or flash a warning glare to him before she either managed to hold herself with her usual grace or get baited into a lively argument. It didn’t seem to happen this time, and he had to remind himself that for all the forms they currently took, she wasn’t that teenager anymore. He wasn’t that Slytherin Prefect driven to consolidate as much power as he could either.

“Not exactly.” She replied.

He was… To be honest, he didn’t know who he was right now. The Head Girl had a strangely gentle smile on her face instead.

“I came to say goodbye—and wish you good luck in your next try, Thomas.”

 _Acceptance_. It caught him off-guard; her expression, her words, _everything_. It was with some effort that he maintained his outward calm.

“Thomas?” He asked.

She shrugged. “You said you didn’t like Tom. Why not get used to a different name?”

Then, McGonagall smiled brilliantly, with so much trust and belief in it that it seemed unreal. It _couldn’t_ have been directed at him, could it? Didn’t she have issues still with the children she had _raised_ and sent to a war of his making? Children he’d decimated? But no. The smile was still there, as warm and bright as a hundred suns, regardless of his disbelief. She hugged him all the same, like an old friend than an old enemy, prompting him to stiffen up before slowly trying to figure out how on earth he was supposed to return it and awkwardly hugged her back. For about five seconds. She had fortunately let him go just before he was getting uneasy with all this touchy-feely normal people emotional display (and before he had the strong urge to shove her away).

“Better luck next time, Thomas,” she said. She kissed his cheek before walking away. He stared at her retreating form, still not quite believing what had happened.

“What next time?” He asked. She waved at him, a cool smile on her lips, but didn’t answer his question. He reined in his annoyance. She was enjoying this, he just _knew_. And why had all the people that he’d met again around here are his former enemies, anyway?

 _Of course, it’s not as if you had actual_ friends _, is it?_ His sarcastic inner voice provided him with the answer.

“Does this have anything to do with what Harry said?” His voice was stern and demanding, but it didn’t work on her. McGonagall had always had a spine of steel and had known him for far too long.

He gave up when she didn’t look back again, watching the scenes of his life run back from the orphanage, the bloody _orphanage_ again, with a confident young Tom that was blissfully ignorant of all the notoriety he was gaining for himself and the wariness Dumbledore had of him. Tom looked away. If he kept watching, he was going to snap unflattering words at the young idiot currently killing a pet rabbit on the screen and thinking it was the height of power. It just gets all the wrong attention.

“Why does everyone seem to know about what’s going on but me?”

 ‘-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this something like a year or so ago. Before it dies an agonising death through over-editing, I thought I might as well just bite the bullet and publish it in all its flawed glory. 
> 
> Why I wrote this: Believe it or not, I actually feel for well-written sociopathic characters, and I don't consider it an impossibility for them to still be sociopathic and yet a passably functional member of society (I'll refrain from regurgitating some rants on their psyche here). Alas, that last fine balance is not often found in fiction. This work is the first step of my contribution in that direction. 
> 
> Any comments would be much appreciated. (By 'any comments', I really mean 'anything even tangentially related to the story'--because I enjoy an interesting conversation that much).


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